Showing that love in the darkest places, showing Jesus love, despite everything the world throws at you, is the single greatest act of evangelism there is. You are called to this not just this week, not just when we are reminded of it in scripture, but every single day of your life.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. amen.
Please take a seat. Well, after last week’s 20 minutes, I promise you I won’t go on for 20 minutes this morning. And actually, this week’s gospel is fairly straightforward to understand.
And when I was speaking about this week’s sermon with Edmund and Catherine in the car, edmund just went, well, why don’t you just say what it says, “be kind” and leave it at that.
And there’s a big temptation for me to just stand here and say the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Be kind, Amen, and off we go. But I feel like I wouldn’t be earning my stipend if I did that. But that is essentially what’s going on in the Gospel.
We have Jesus once again quoting the law. The law which, as we learned from last week, Jesus bases an awful lot of his teaching on condemns and fulfils in equal amounts. If you’re not following what I’m saying, go to the website and listen to last week’s sermon. Make yourself a cup of tea first.
But he’s talking about the law.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Now, in today’s culture, that can seem quite cruel. It is about equity, it’s about justice. In Jesus time, however, it was about ensuring that justice was fair.
Not even in Jesus time. We still see it today, where the punishment for a crime can far exceed sense and natural justice, as we would see it. If you steal something, you’ll have your hands cut off, the punishment is extreme.
The law that Jesus is talking about here is about saying that justice should be comparable with what the person has done wrong. So you shouldn’t kill somebody because they’ve committed adultery, which was the punishment at the time.
So this law was about mercy. And so Jesus is referencing that mercy and he’s saying, listen, you know this teaching. You know that this is about mercy. So that’s the way he’s connecting with people.
You’ve heard about this, but I say this, “offer the wicked man no resistance. On the contrary, if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well”.
So what Jesus is doing is he’s taking the idea of justice for wrongdoing. And just as he was earlier on in Matthew with the beatitudes, turning things around and encouraging us to think about it in a different way. Now, it’s easy to think of justice and how to deal with people doing things that are wrong when you are the person who is giving out that justice.
So when you’re saying, well, you’ve done this wrong, therefore it’s an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, it’s rather harder to do that when you are the victim of something. And so Jesus, once again turning things on its head, says, look at it from the perspective of the person that the bad thing is being done to. How do you want to react to that now? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. There is the teaching that Jesus has just referenced that’s what would be the right thing in the Jewish law of the time, the oral law of the scribes and the pharisees.
But Jesus says, no! That’s not the way to respond. The way to respond is to offer mercy even as the victim mercy always. When somebody does something wrong to you, when somebody hurts you, then embrace that. Embrace it as a moment to demonstrate God’s love in the world or your love of following me. An eye for an eye in a tooth or a tooth doesn’t go far enough.
It’s not merciful enough. God’s mercy goes far beyond what you might consider to be fair, far beyond. And so he gives those examples. “If a man takes you to law and would have your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If anyone orders you to go 1 mile, go 2 miles with him. Give to anyone who asks and if anyone wants to borrow, do not turn them away”. He asks us to act in mercy from a place of hurt and pain.
I think it is the single hardest thing that Jesus asks us to do. It’s not simply about forgiving your enemies, which I’ve spoken about as being a very difficult thing to do. And I think the nearer the enemy is to you, the harder it is to forgive. But you can work on that over time. Jesus is telling us to react in the moment of anger and hurt, and upset with almost superhuman, divine mercy.
You have to override those basic instincts of anger which we talked about last week as being the heart of evil. You have to override those instincts of revenge. You have to override those passions that pour out of you, that come from a dark place and in their place pour in love to an almost impossible to understand degree.
Once again, Jesus is setting the bar for the way that we behave in the world incredibly high. So we have to give it a go. We have to give it a go. What’s the worst that could happen? You don’t get there. But you will have given mercy in that situation. You will have given love in that situation.
Then Jesus goes on to explain why that’s important. And he compares the way that people react in the world is as fair and reasonable. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, fair punishment for a crime, treating people equitably.
He demonstrates that. He says, well, everybody does that. Being a Christian, you have to go further. I mean, everybody tries to act in a reasonable way. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Everybody tries to do that. Even the tax collectors do that. To be a christian, you have to go further. A lot further. Not a bit, a lot further.
It’s very easy to talk about Jesus love in the world and generosity in the world when he is creating gallons and gallons of wine overflowing generosity at a party. It’s very easy to see Jesus love in the world that is generous and overflowing. But Jesus calls us to that same generosity, that same overflowing love, in even the most difficult situations.
Now, last week, there was the ultimate example of that, as far as I have ever seen it, and that was the 21 martyrs on the beach in Libya not that long ago when ISIS took those 20 young Christians. And one man who wasn’t a Christian, who but turned to Christ at the example of his brothers on that beach and carried out the most awful atrocity. Those men went to God with Jesus on their lips, with no hatred on their lips for the men who were doing the evil thing to them, but with nothing but prayer and love on their lips for these dreadful, dreadful men. And the thing that they were doing, the evil that they were perpetrating. So Jesus challenge to us is to live our life in this way.
And so when you find yourself in a situation where you are angry and you want to react in anger, if you can’t immediately call this gospel to mind, then call those 21 young men to mind on that beach. Because if they can do it in those circumstances, in the midst of that much evil, you can do it. You can utter Jesus name in love in the darkest places in the world. And why does Jesus call us to this? Because it is training for heaven.
Because that is what it is like when we are with our Father, when we are able to reach for that love so easily. It is also because it is how people see Christians behaving in the world. And it is through those examples of love, even in the darkest places in the world, that people will come to recognise who Jesus is, like that one man on the beach with the 20 other Christians.
Showing that love in the darkest places, showing Jesus love, despite everything the world throws at you, is the single greatest act of evangelism there is. You are called to this not just this week, not just when we are reminded of it in scripture, but every single day of your life.
Pray for the strength to do it. Pray that you can find the boundless love of God, that you may pour it out in the world. amen.